Mickadeit: At 10, she could ace law school entry exam

April 16, 2013

Updated April 9, 2015 2:43 a.m.

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Kaitlyn Sims, 10, shows off a blue gill she caught at Laguna Lake in Fullerton on Saturday. She had to throw it back. The LSAT-busting 5th-grader loves to fish. FRANK MICKADEIT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Kaitlyn Sims, 10, shows off a blue gill she caught at Laguna Lake in Fullerton on Saturday. She had to throw it back. The LSAT-busting 5th-grader loves to fish. FRANK MICKADEIT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Hoping to attend law school, Cal State Fullerton undergrad Ashley Duran started studying for the entrance exam, the LSAT.

The LSAT is a timed nightmare that asks questions like: "Todd, Janet, John, Pat and Shawn are to take an ethics class taught by Shirley. Todd has to sit next to Janet but can't sit next to Shawn. Janet has to sit two seats from John. Pat can sit anywhere except where John wants to sit, and John has to sit on the right, except on Tuesdays, when he can sit in the middle but never to the left of Todd. Shirley feels she must separate Todd and John by at least one seat. How many seating arrangements are possible?"

It turns out this kind of issue rarely comes up in law school. Nonetheless, Ashley spent a lot of time studying for it at her family's Buena Park home. One night, she decided to give a few practice problems to her sister, Kaitlyn. She got the answers in half the allotted time. Ashley started reading multiple-choice questions aloud. Before she could get through all of the possible answers, Kaitlyn would blurt out the correct one.

Ashley told her LSAT prep teacher, Mark Sacks. He gave Ashley a partial exam for Kaitlyn. Extrapolated over an actual 3.5-hour exam, Kaitlyn scored in the 95th percentile nationwide.

"That would be the highest score I've ever seen anyone come in and take cold," says Sacks, a deputy district attorney who has been teaching the LSAT since his days at Harvard Law School and has had his own business, ScoreItUp LSAT Prep, for five years. "I've had two students get perfect 180s and several in the high 170s, and none did that well when they first took it cold."

Kaitlyn is 10 years old.

I met Kaitlyn and her mom, Regena Thyberg, on Saturday at Laguna Lake in Fullerton, where Kaitlyn had just competed in a kids' fishing derby. Kaitlyn loves to fish.

Kaitlyn was kicked out of her first preschool, her mom says. She was not playing with other kids and sometimes lashed out at them when they touched her. Staff at her second preschool urged Thyberg to have Kaitlyn tested. She was diagnosed as a high-functioning autistic.

She is also an amazing girl. The day I meet her, she is wearing blue jeans, a pink jacket and a purple bow in her hair. She smiles, laughs and chatters with me and others fishing nearby. "I caught a fish!" she exclaims. "You should have seen it."

Over the next hour I watch her catch three more, each of them undersized bluegills she has to throw back. She doesn't seem to care. She carefully pulls the hook out of each fish's mouth and sets it free.

Fishing is one of many interests that set Kaitlyn apart from girls her age. She crochets – even though she can't wear knitted clothes because she's bothered by the sensation on her skin. She started a worm farm in her back yard so she could raise live bait. That led to growing vegetables. She trades them across the fence with a neighbor Regena barely talked to in 20 years because the woman seemed so reserved. Kaitlyn can handle one-on-ones. Large groups she has problems with.

"She was sent home 15 times in the fourth grade," her mom says. Sometimes, her classmates would be having a party inside and she would be found sitting by herself in the schoolyard. "It breaks your heart."

I ask Kaitlyn about the LSAT. "Kinda hard," she tells me in a friendly way, although she can't look me in the eye. "They were pretty complicated. I heard I got three wrong."

I stopped questioning Kaitlyn because I didn't want to bother her or make her feel like some kind of freak, although I realize that simply writing about her has that potential. I told her mom and sister that maybe this little story would open up some minds.

As I watched her fish – flitting along the bank, gleefully hopping across rocks – she was such a kid. Then, there's that adult side that has her diligently going to Starbucks to collect coffee grounds she uses for composting.

Ashley told me that one day she teased Kaitlyn that she should attend law school with her.

"No, Ashley, I'm sorry," Kaitlyn replied. "You may attend alone. You may tell them I am not coming. I intend to be a veterinarian."

"It was like she really thought they were expecting her," Ashley told me.

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